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I have not seen my parents for 5 years and they have reminded me that they are 78. It's great to know they're still rooting for me. I still feel very much like a little fish that's been pulled out of a familiar pond or stream and then after a while in a cosy fishtank been dumped into the middle of the Atlantic. I am in the middle of a totally alien country with an alien culture with nobody around me that I've known for very long. I'm feeling very overwhelmed. The people in the US are wonderful - kind, generous, friendly and interesting. It's just hitting me at the moment that this isn't where I was brought up. I guess I'm missing the miserable weather, the grouchy people, the expensive and bad food of Britain, not to mention the once-a-week bathers.

I'm pulled in two very strong directions... I want to get some US qualifications as it's easier to work and get money in the US than the UK. I also desperately want to see my parents again and possibly to meet my mother's newly-discovered cousin.

At the moment, a cabin in the wilderness with no people around sounds very inviting.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=630 Tue, 9 Mar 2010 23:37:28 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=629
What I desperately need is more money. This seems to be a quick way of getting there. Once I have doubled my income, I can afford to do more studying etc.

Work today was steady but quiet. ]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=629 Mon, 8 Mar 2010 01:14:00 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=628
It's not going to be cheap but I think it's going to be very worthwhile even if - for the very first time - I have to apply for a loan to do it. I detest the idea of owing money but... I think the end result is going to be worthwhile.

The people at work studying there have a high opinion of Midlands Tech. I'm glad about that. It does bode well for the place. When I studied in Swansea University and Swansea College, people had fairly low opinions and this reflected in the general atmosphere and the quality of the courses as well as most people's final grades.

I really like the forms Midlands College has. The verification form for non citizens has 5 things to fill in. I'm all in favour of simple forms. I've seen some truly horrendous forms that ask just about every question the form designer could imagine and most of them just weren't directly relevant to the purpose of the form. What Midlands Tech does is to make form filling almost pleasurable.

I have to trot that form down to the campus and while I'm there I plan to ask plenty questions. Finances are going to be pretty darned tight on this so the faster I can get it done the better - even if it means loads of loans.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=628 Sun, 7 Mar 2010 22:57:24 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=627
I seem to be set to move back to the UK. I don't know whether it'll be permanent but I'm also researching other avenues. One avenue is taking a course in the US in the medical field which will mean money and fairly quickly. Another avenue is taking a nursing course in the UK which is actually a paid course. I'm 43 so whether I'm too old, I don't know.

One thing is certain, doing the same as I've been doing is not an option. I should have leapt on the courses several years ago but didn't because I wanted my existing qualifications to work for me. Unfortunately they don't and never have. I regret spending years trying to make use of them. Clearly Gretchen is dead right when she says the medical courses are the only courses where work is guaranteed. I'd heard the same about computer courses some 20 years ago which is why I have a bunch of computer qualifications.

I checked into my green card and found that it's good as long as I don't stay out of the US for more than a year. I also found I can get US citizenship while abroad and a few other interesting things.

Currently I'm trying to decide what to take with me to Britain and what to sell and what just to dump or give away. It's tricky.

I'm at quite a crossroads in my life. One that I thought I'd passed some 5 years ago.

I've tried computer repairs and photography as income generators. Both work but so poorly that they can only be supplementary income generators. Even with a running Yellow Pages advert, only two calls have been received in about a month - for photography. With running internet adverts that have been running for years, no calls have ever been received for either service. Business cards and flyers get the same low interest rate. I clearly cannot go on flogging dead horses.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=627 Sat, 6 Mar 2010 22:04:04 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=626
Interestingly, one of the people that works there also works elsewhere and said there were vacancies in the other company. I took the details and am applying. It could be a bonus that I'm already known to one of their employees. Apparently it's a small shipping firm that's fairly local. Anyway, I dropped them a line and a resume. I'll give them a call tomorrow to see whether I can arrange an interview.

]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=626 Thu, 4 Mar 2010 01:20:00 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=625
Work went well today. It's very obvious how few customers are coming in judging by the speed with which the shelves can be tidied. Indeed, most places didn't need any tidying. I discovered some people are planning to leave with the general comment that they can get more money elsewhere. I think that's probably true. One fellow is going to work elsewhere for pretty well double what he's getting. That seems pretty worthwhile. Indeed, I'm looking, now that I've got my year of US work experience, to move on. Meanwhile I'm hoping the photography business takes off. It shows signs of a slow take-off.

The best thing I ever did was recognise what utter tripe is written in all the business advice books. I've ready plenty and they're all full of utter tripe. Mind, as one person said, there're a couple of chapters worth reading in each book but the rest is just padding and rubbish.

Meanwhile, the web stats seem to increase. I must confess I don't really know what good they are but it is interesting to watch them.

In addition to my comment on business books, I find that generally the internet is a singularly useless tool - other than for wasting time. From my website and internet advertising I have had maybe one or two enquiries and nothing serious. In fact I've had a ton of rubbish via online sources.

A website, in my opinion, is a handy product brochure. It's not worth wasting money on search engine optimisation or any of that crap. Interestingly, my Google adwords voucher did eventually get approved. I've been very specific about where it's advertised, which does cut down on the number of adverts but does target them better. In the few days that's been running, no hits - nothing. In the 2 weeks my Yellow Pages advert has been running, I've had one booking and one serious enquiry. The enquirer had indeed also viewed my website. Clearly I'm on the right track. Interestingly, TV advertising, business cards and vehicle advertising do absolutely nothing.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=625 Wed, 3 Mar 2010 00:02:00 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=624
Today it snowed briefly. Snow covered the cars and grass but as the road was warm, didn't stay on the road. Pretty soon after I arrived home the snow ceased. A lot was forecast but seems to have passed us by.

One of my thoughts today had been to go along to the Columbia Camera Club meeting but as work called, that killed that thought dead. Mind, by the time they called I'd pretty much forgotten about attending any club meetings. This is one of the problems of working late - I don't get to go to any clubs or societies. On the other hand, with the money coming in being very slender, I just don't have the money for memberships. It's great though that money is coming in.

Now that I have my real world advert for my photography business, I have had bookings. This compares to none with internet advertising. Word of mouth got me bookings also. TV got me nothing and in the past, newspaper adverts have led nowhere, expensively so this time around I'm not bothering with the press. In a few months I shall have to assess the impact my advertising has had. ]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=624 Tue, 2 Mar 2010 01:29:00 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=623
Meanwhile, in the real world (a world totally devoid of statistical rubbish), one of the two mailbox door hinges disappeared. I looked into replacing it with a real hinge but found real hinges were $2.49 each and a replacement mailbox was $7.49. In the end, I spent neither. The mailbox door had a hole punched in it with folded metal as the pin of a very cheap hinge. The mailbox had a folded flap of steel threaded through that hole. The flap had fallen off totally - it was probably only glued on. I drilled a small hole into the mailbox to match the hole in the door and passed a plastic cable tie through. The door now works better than it has for ages and cable ties are pretty cheap. That was a low to no cost repair. It won't last very long but should last a few months before the tie needs to be replaced. I am loathe to throw out the mailbox as it was a wedding present which we only started to use after the lumberjacks demolished the box that came with the house.

Out of curiosity I looked to see where one of my hits was coming from. I had 54 from one webhost which turned out to be in Romania. That's very curious. I would have expected all my hits to come from the US. Even odder than that, looking at the list of pages from which people find my website, I'm seeing some very strange places. One is a forum for Sugar CRM. That seems to be some kind of software discussion forum and I'd never heard of the software before either. I looked at the site and did a site search but couldn't find the link. I wonder whether it's just the page last used by the user that's recorded. If that's the case, that explains why last month a Russian porno website was listed as the referring link. I guess some sad soul had been looking at porn before viewing my website. Yuck!

Work today was hard. Hours have been cut tremendously for the business. All paid holidays have been suspended. Some people aren't getting any hours at all. I'm one of the lucky few that is getting hours. Mind, I keep getting sales in, which right now probably means a lot.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=623 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:01:43 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=622
Interestingly, I was looking at a photo taken with a flash set on 1/64th of a shot being fired from a Glock 40. The bullet was blurred but visible in the photo. This is excellent news. It means that for the vast majority of high-speed imaging, an ultra-high speed flash is really not needed. Having said that, a higher speed flash would mean the images were that much less blurred. After encountering some extremely obnoxious people on Flickr online forums, I decided that I was probably going to build a microflash but that also I was going to milk the most I could out of my ordinary flash. Even more interestingly I've come across many different styles of high-speed imaging, using a single flash, three flashes, two flashes, a single microflash etc. The major problem with microflashes is that they're very big and very bulky. They're also limited in that they have just one flash head. It should be possible to build them with bigger flash heads but then the question would be whether there was enough power in the base to power two or more heads. It's a project that's on the back burner for the moment. I can do so much with a Vivitar 283 that I don't need to bother just yet. Speaking of Vivitar 283s, they're cheaper than Canon 580s and, as I found out when I dropped my 580, cheaper to buy than the 580 is to repair! Even the latest generation of Vivitar 283 - the Vivitar 283HV, brand new, is cheaper than a repair on a 580. Having said that, I make a lot of use of the ETTL facility of the 580 that the 283 just doesn't have.

On stats, most people seem to be viewing my blog. An increasing number are viewing my photography website and a few are viewing the version designed for mobile phones. Hardly anybody is viewing my PC repair website.

I am in two very competitive fields - photography and PC repairs. Just about every kid out of high-school picks up some computer repair skills and then tries to use them. The really hard thing is data recovery. That's a much more lucrative field. Having said that, the software is now available free, which is a bonus. Some of the really hard data recovery stuff such as hard drive disassembly I wouldn't even want to attempt. Unlike what others say, it's not a "clean room" job. It's just a case of keeping fingerprints off the disk and using latex gloves in a dust free (or as dust free as is practical) chamber. That chamber could quite easily be a clear plastic bag.

Photography is competitive because everybody with a camera and an internet connection wants to try to sell their work. Thus sites like the photo sharing sites make their money from suckers that think they'll sell photos just by sticking them on-line and waiting for a buyer. It's not going to happen - it's never going to happen. Occasionally they might make the odd sale but so infrequently that it's just not worth the bother. The best thing is these sites have it made. They have arrangements to have prints made but they don't do the printing themselves. They do the marketing and sell accounts that will take credit cards but they don't do anything else. Most people will end up funding the site through membership fees while a very lucky few might sell a few images.

I had a very interesting experience earlier in the year with a client who was completely unable to download images from a popular (but free) photo-sharing website. In the end I put them on CD and posted them. That client could no more download than order prints off the photo sharing website. It was not a website problem. It was just too technically challenging for that client. Overestimating the technical capabilities of a client is one of the things many inexperienced photographers do. I used to hear a load of rubbish on-line from amateurs who used to use online print sales etc. Clients aren't all capable of that. Most are just about capable of taking a CD to WalMart but nothing more.

I hear a lot of people whining about two things - the first is people copying prints instead of buying copies at inflated prices from the original photographer. The other is of people putting images onto a CD and handing the CD to the client. I see nothing wrong with clients doing their own printing nor with clients copying images. Every copy will be worse than the original. If I scan a print and then print from that print, it'll look similar to the original but not quite as good. Each generation will be worse. Only an original will be high quality. Mind, one thing the people saying that kind of thing forget is that a genuine print will have at least a rubber stamp on the back identifying it as the work of a studio/photographer. A copy will not have that stamp.

Speaking of quality, some people wouldn't know quality if it picked up a baseball bat and smacked them between the eyes. Thus a scanned image that has a horrible colour cast and isn't quite straight or in focus, is covered with dust and fingerprints will look just fine to them. Such people are more than likely to do their own photography with a zoom compact without even comprehending the quality difference of an SLR. I'll be the first to say though that the quality of zoom compacts has rocketed since I had my first in 2001 and since people were posting VGA sized images with turquoise highlights from top-end digital compacts in the late 1990s. They're not yet on a par with an SLR though.

The tally for February was pretty close to January's total. If February had 31 days or even 30 then I would have matched January. I seem to be getting a few hits a day on my photo website which is welcome. I definitely need to go viral with my photography website. Thus I set up a Facebook group with some of my photos on it. I need some more spectacular high-speed images though, in order to make it successful. I'll have to get some cardboard boxes from work tomorrow night and use them as a portable fragmentation studio.

I just looked at my photos, thinking about how to make them go viral. Clearly I need to do some more editing. I don't much care for extremes of photo editing but to make things go viral they need an almost cartoon-like quality. This is achieved by ramping up contrast and saturation. I also need to work on brightness for many of the images I display online. Personally, I like things to look natural but the high-speed imaging is what will make my site go viral. I need to do a fair bit more of it. It's my attention grabber. Once I have people's attention I can start selling the more mundane stuff.

Aside from being just pure fun, high-speed images do have a major use in industry with destructive materials testing. The general public doesn't get to see too much of it so something viral might just be the ticket. I'm pretty sure that presented in a bright, stunning way, people's jaws will drop and it will go viral. Additionally, it'll be extra material to put in my book and I'm not going to be spending extra money to do this. I already have everything I need aside from cardboard boxes, which are free.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=622 Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:52:46 -0500 http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=621
Nobody has explained to the Moslem terrorists that dead is dead and that there won't be 49 virgins for each dead terrorist but a fiery reception from a fellow with a tail, horns and a trident. If the Buddhists are to be believed then they may get reincarnated as dung beetles.

The current earthquakes and tsunamis are very interesting. The tektonic plates are moving more over the past decade then they have for several decades. They keep talking about "the big one" for San Francisco, which will probably come at some point in the future. In fact, it'll definitely come but whether it'll come this century or even this millennium is debatable.

The doomsayers are speaking loudly about doom and the end of the world. It reminds me of comic books I read as a child with fellows walking down the street wearing sandwich boards proclaiming "The end is nigh". If that's the best a lot of people can do then I feel sorry for them. Rather than sitting around stating that the end is coming, how about getting some ideas together about how to survive it all? Of course, I forgot - most doom and gloom mongers are just there to revel in the fear they create and would probably be the first to fall down a freshly opened crevice in the Earth.

People are predicting the end of the world in 2012 because that's when the Mayan calendar ends. The fact is somewhat different. The Mayans believed in cyclical time. I believe they had 7 cycles. Over the 1,500 years since the end of the Mayan empire, the cycles have probably ended simultaneously a few times. Why did they choose 2012 as an end of their calendar - perhaps it was more coincidence than anything else as all things have to end at some point. Why did Nostradamus say that Pope John Paul II would be the last ever Pope? Simple - he wanted to try to predict as many as he could then when he ran out of steam he simply said "and that's the last one". Several hundred years later, is anybody going to tap him on the shoulder to ask why he didn't predict more? The doom and gloom mongers are trying to make more out of it than actually exists. It's a simple get out to say "and this will be the last pope or year or whatever". Anybody that questions it will be answered "wait and see". The fact neither questioner nor predictor will be around is immaterial so a belief is founded based on some misguided mystic.

What amazes me is that people should all want to believe in the end of the world. Let's face it - the world probably will end at some point - either consumed by the Sun when it turns into a red giant or frozen into little ice cubes if the Sun just quietly expires. The world might even get demolished by a giant asteroid or as Douglas Adams would have it, demolished to make a hyperspace bypass. Trying to predict it seems very pointless without making adequate preparation to survive it.

How will we survive the end of the world? Certainly not by going to Mars! We may survive the end of the world by designing a giant space ship to take as many people as possible across the universe to another habitable planet. The big caveat there is that the whole ship will need to be repairable and everything, even the tools will need to be repaired in flight. Not only that but decay of the materials will need to be taken into account as such a journey may take several thousand years. Even if suspended animation were used with the astronauts being defrosted for a few weeks a time every 10 years or so then it's still a pretty difficult if not impossible venture. How would they cope if the planet chosen turned out to be full of flesh eating microscopic organisms?

Clearly the doom and gloom mongers are wasting everybody's time and patience. Nothing can be done to escape the doom and gloom they predict other than escaping the misery of listening to the blighters by leaving the room when they start flapping their lips and uttering their rubbish.

It's about the same with the climate change rubbish. The climate is always changing. Man-made pollution does not exceed the level emitted by volcanoes. A single volcano will emit far more greenhouse gas than the whole of mankind ever could. There are thousands of volcanoes. Better than worrying about climate change, plant some trees and make the landscape look nicer.

I find all the arguments in favour of energy-saving lighting to be very debatable. For example, I put in some florescent lighting and found that it has issues:
1. The florescent bulbs don't light as quickly as incandescent.
2. The florescent bulbs don't produce as much light.
3. The florescent bulbs trigger migraines.
4. The florescent bulbs contain mercury vapour which is hazardous. The incandescent bulbs do not contain anything toxic.
5. The florescent bulbs cost a lot more and don't last appreciably longer. In fact, on a cost per bulb basis, they cost more even in the long run than incandescent - including running costs. This is not theory - it's fact, based on my experience of running florescent and incandescent bulbs.

One of the biggest things that influence the cost of lighting is where the bulbs are made. I find if they're made in China, they just do not last as long as those made elsewhere. Just like everything else from China, they're sub-standard, shoddily made rubbish. Try bulbs that last a week!

LED lighting is very interesting and a neat development. Again, they're expensive and with a very debatable life. The quoted figures of 30,000 hours, 50,000 hours and 100,000 hours are quite frankly unbelievable. Continuously on, a bulb with a quoted life of 10,000 hours would last about 18 months. Switching the bulbs on and off is where the problems come as surges in current are not kind to electronics. A bulb switched on and off several times a day is not likely to last as long as one left continually on. By the time 18 months is up or even more than 6 months for most people, the warranty period (if any) has expired and the manufacturer is away with your money.

Again, current LED lighting isn't as bright and doesn't have the optical range of incandescent lighting. With the brighter LEDs, the control circuitry becomes an issue. The LEDs may last a long time but if the control circuitry isn't as good as the LED then it's no better than any ordinary light.

I'm not really in favour of most of these modern forms of lighting though I do like the sound of LED lighting. Rather than making more efficient lighting and more efficient electronics, instead of making this the sole concern as it pretty well is at the moment, I'd rather the emphasis be placed on domestic power generation. This would have much more knock-on effect than reduction in power consumption. If every house roof has solar panels then the quantity of power generated would exceed any possible savings from more efficient gadgets. The drive for more efficient gadgets would come from householders who didn't want to pay the power company for power but who wanted to use more gadgets in their house off their own electricity. Everything's being done backwards - as normal.

So, in this world where natural disasters are increasing and where terrorism is a big thing, it makes sense to be self-sufficient in things such as power. If a terrorist strike took out the transformers or the power plants then large areas would suffer. Those with their own generating capacity would, of course, benefit. I cannot understand why South Carolina does not require builders to do as they do in California, to put solar panels on the roof of each house. Even if that power were only fed into the grid, it would mean a massive reduction in the power needed to be generated. That would have a bigger effect on greenhouse gasses and pollution than absolutely anything else.

In other news, I was idly considering Schlieren photography. Looking online, I see lots of interesting flash adaptations. The requirement of Schlieren photography is that the flash be a point light source aimed at a concave mirror from as close to the lens axis as possible. This has the effect of making the air visible instead of invisible. Thus, it's possible to see the air moving as something passes through it and possible also to record this movement with a high-speed photo. The flash adaptations I was looking at were wild and wacky home-brew concoctions made by assorted amateurs. I already know my construction will be pretty simple, involving black construction paper and ordinary white paper. Many seem to use silver paint but in truth, I find silver paint does not reflect quite as well as white as it's more grey than reflective.]]> General http://www.sageworld.orgindex.php?itemid=621 Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:25:53 -0500